Posted on 07/25/2006 10:52:10 PM PDT by neverdem
When Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are examined in controlled studies, a new review reports, scientists find no proof that they are superior to any other intervention in reducing alcohol dependence or alcohol-related problems.
The researchers, led by Marica Ferri of the Italian Agency for Public Health in Rome, found little to suggest that 12-step programs reduced the severity of addiction any more than any other intervention. And no data showed that 12-step interventions were any more — or any less — successful in increasing the number of people who stayed in treatment or reducing the number who relapsed after being sober.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a self-help group that offers emotional support for alcohol abstinence and holds that alcoholism is a spiritual and a medical disease.
In some of the studies reviewed, A.A. was compared with other psychological treatments including cognitive-behavioral therapy, which encourages the conscious identification of high-risk situations for alcohol use; motivational enhancement therapy, based on principles of social and cognitive psychology; and relapse prevention therapy, a variation on the cognitive-behavioral approach. It was also compared with other spiritual and nonspiritual 12-step programs.
One study compared brief advice to attend A.A. meetings to motivational methods for encouraging 12-step involvement. Another evaluated the effectiveness of hospital-based 12-step programs, compared with community-based 12-step efforts.
The paper was published last week in The Cochrane Library, a journal devoted to systematic reviews of health care interventions. In all, the researchers examined eight trials involving 3,417 men and women ages 18 and older.
None of the studies compared A.A. with no treatment at all, and the researchers said that made it more difficult to draw conclusions about effectiveness. About one-fifth of alcoholics achieve long-term sobriety without treatment.
There is no single known cause of alcoholism, but the researchers wrote that...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"The first 11 steps are all B.S. You need to jump straight to number 12 -- STOP DRINKING."
I've always thought that complete abstinence is begging the question in a matter of speaking. It seems to me that it's like saying you've cured your fear of flying by not going flying any more.
I agree with whoever said it! My husband quit on his own, 11 great years ago. His brother does AA..and does it, and does it, and does it, for the last 20 yrs. It doesn't work for many. I think it's partly because if you fall off the wagon they tell you it's okay, just a relapse, no big deal. I call that the green light treatment. Also in my brother-in-law's case, he was taught by AA to blame everyone in his life that he's an alcoholic rather than to take responsibility for it himself.
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Its just like traffic school....the entire class goes in one ear and out the other....the boredom creates an intense desire to avoid the class again.
It's also like saying you've cured your cancer when you no longer have any cancer in your body. Think about it.
That is called "white-knuckle" sobriety - the type where you wake up, having nightmares that you drank again.
Don't blame AA...I used to work with two guys in AA and I learned a lot about the group. The last thing they're telling these folks is "it's not your fault."
No, they teach about the physiology of addiction, and then you have to make up your mind, what to do about it.
bttt
Ah, but it helps the counselors with their economic issues while ripping off the insurance companies and taxpayers. It could be worse. All these psychologists and Licensed Clinical Social Workers could be directly employed by the gov't.
Not.
If he thinks that way, it was not because he was "taught by AA."
The 12 Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
It's just another addiction... slightly healthier than the other one. I had to go to a few meetings after a DUI several years ago now. Guys in there were telling about how they'd been sober 8, 9, 10 or more years, and retold how they lost everything to drinking after they woke up in their own barf in a phone booth, and they told the story every week, over and over and over again.
I couldn't help think... 10 years, and you haven't come up with a better hobby? You're not drinking, but you're ~still~ talking about drinking!
It fills people with this idea they'll never ever be recovered. I just don't think that's healthy. They still feel as worthless as the last day they drank, just one terror filled slip from a binge. I don't see the appeal.
Yes, thinking of my brother-in-law, it's probably his own interpretation of what was said at meetings. He had done a program in upstate NY once for 8 months, his longest sobriety over the years, but when he returned he did nothing but blame his mother & father, i.e. why did they let him quit school, and I'm just like my father (violent drinkers both)so what do you expect was his way of looking at it. He also did drugs in his youth. I have personally blamed the parents for never getting treatment for him, but they were messed up themselves with drinking. It was definitely a family tradition, as is common I guess.
That is how I feel about AA for some, just another habit. I had come across a book, bought it too (for my sister to no avail), it was anti-AA. First thing was Step 1 of the 12 Steps..admitting you are powerless...rather than taking control of your life. I liked the idea and others in the book.
Maybe it was not deliberately 'taught' to him but it was what he got from years of going to various AA groups.
I used to work with an alcoholic in AA. He had been sober for 10 years. When someone goes to an AA meeting and wants to speak, they start by saying two things: their name followed by "I am an alcoholic." AA doesn't claim to cure anyone of alcoholism. As my friend often reminded me, he was still an alcoholic even though he hadn't had a drink in 10 years. So people in AA do not beg the question that if they abstain from alcohol, then they are cured of alcoholism.
But AA doesn't work for every body. Another guy I know went to AA to get off the alcohol. When he got sober, he went on to hard drugs. After some trouble with the law, he got off the drugs and went back to alcohol. The last I heard of him is that he is still off the drugs and is a happy, sloppy, drinking alcoholic.
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